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In small societies, there isn't really a great need for money, because you can generally trust your friends and neighbours to return any labour, food or goods in kind.
小型社會并無貨幣需求。人們通常可以信任自己的朋友或鄰居，相信他們會用勞動、食物或其他物品作為交換或回報。
The need for money, as we understand it, grows when you are dealing with strangers you may never see again and can't necessarily trust-that is, when you're trading in a cosmopolitan city like Sardis.
我們很容易了解，對貨幣的需要是在人們與不太信任、有可能不會再見面的陌生人進行交易時出現的，而在像薩迪斯這樣的國際都市就常會出現這種貿易。
Before the first Lydian coins, payments were made mostly in precious metal - effectively just lumps of gold and silver.
在貨幣出現之前，呂底亞的支付媒介是貴金屬，主要是金塊或銀塊。
It didn't really matter what shape the metal was, just how much it weighed and how pure it was.
形狀并不要緊，重要的是重量和純度。
But there's a difficulty;in their natural state, gold and silver were often found mixed with each other and, indeed, mixed with other metals.
但問題是，自然狀態下的金礦和 銀礦常混雜在一起，甚至摻雜其他價值不高的金屬。
Checking a metal's purity was a tedious task - likely to hold up every business transaction, and even when the Lydians and their neighbours invented coinage, about a hundred years before Croesus, this problem still remained.
檢驗金屬的純度是項無聊的工作，幾乎每次都得耽誤貿易的進行。在克羅伊斯王登基前一百年左右，呂底亞人已發明了貨幣，但純度問題仍無法解決。
They used the naturally occurring mixture of gold and silver, not the pure forms of the metals.
他們使 用的是自然狀態的金銀混合物，而非某種純金屬。
The Lydians eventually solved this problem, speeded up the market and, in the process, became hugely rich.
呂底亞人最終找到了解決問題的方法，從而加速了市場交易，并在此過程中積累了巨額財富。
They realised that the answer was for the state to mint coins of pure gold and pure silver, of consistent weights that would have absolutely reliable value.
他們的方案是讓國家來鑄造固定重量、價值 絕對值得信賴的純金與純銀貨幣。
It was the currency that you could trust in completely and, without any checking, spend, spend, spend!
如果有國家做擔保，金幣和銀幣便成為可以完全信任的貨幣，不再需要任何檢查程序即能放心使用。
How did the Lydians manage to pull this off?
而他們 到底是如何做到這一點的呢？
Paul Craddock, expert in historical metals, explains:
古代金屬專家保羅?克拉多克解釋道：
"The Lydians hit on the idea of the state, or the king, issuing standard weights and standard purity.
呂底亞人選擇讓國家或國王來確定重量與純度標準。
The stamps on them are the guarantee of the weight and the purity.
貨幣上的印記便是重量及純度的保證。
And of course if you're guaranteeing the purity, then it is absolutely necessary that you have the ability not just to add elements to the gold but also to take them out.
但如果要保證純度，則必須具備從金礦中加入或析出一些元素的能力。
